Hiroshima, within a year of my birth
Strangely not taught in the school’s plan
We learnt of 1066, Columbus, and days really gone by
To avoid the truth of contemporary man
No Irish or Jewish questions
Just Hardy and Austen and their English clans
No Franco, Mussolini or even Hitler
Certainly nothing from far, far away Japan
Your President went there a few weeks ago
Said that a flash of bright light and wall of fire
Death fell from the sky, an inferno
A hundred thousand Japanese, a funeral pyre
No denial, apology, from the old foe
Not expected, not needed, save those of the wire
But thoughts of peace and humanity to go
With understanding to quench the fuel of ire
I remember well, at the age of four
My parents gave garden work to a wreck of a man
Couldn’t speak, hardly stand, a remnant of war
Camps in Burma, I couldn’t understand
All he wanted was his fags
Left alone in our garden of his past
I used to watch him, in his old rags
A life destroyed, nailed to the Emperor’s mast
Now Peggy and I, in our Asian adventures
Work side by side with Japanese friends
Teruo, Ishihara, Yasuhiko, Kazanori
As good as James, Sam, Jeff and Wei
Remember Obama’s first smile from the children
Gentle touches, parental embrace
And agree that Hiroshima, like nine-eleven
Changed the world
Out of which a moral awakening
Could possibly come
Winston-Salem, North Carolina, USA, June 2016
